Special Note: Readers are requested to give their support
to the Appeal
for Funds to undertake repairs to the Newman Chapel at Fifehead.

The church itself required urgent repairs to its roof which are now in progress
through funding by English Heritage, however donations are still urgently needed
to pay for repairs to the cracks in the wall of the small Newman chapel, some
of which can be discerned in the photo below.

Please read the Appeal
and give your support to this worthwhile undertaking.

An 8 page brochure describing the connection between the Newmans and the Fifehead
manorial estates, can be downloaded by clicking here.

The connection between Newmans and Fifehead appears to extend back to 1408
or perhaps even 1405 when John
Newman (brother of Robert Newman of St. Thomas's, Salisbury) is recorded
as being Rector there. According to Peter
Oxlade's account, the Newmans first rented the estate from its Lord, the
Abbot of St. Augustine's Abbey, Bristol, from 1408, and subsequently purchased
by Col. Richard Newman in
1660. This disagrees with the information in Wayne Newman's April 1998 article in the Newman Chronicle suggesting that the
first lease over the Fifehead estate was taken out in 1530 by Robert Newman of Fifehead. At any
rate, the family connection lasted for almost 400 yeas "giving a sense
of stability to the village", until the death of Frances
Newman in 1775 when the manor was sold (in 1779) to the brother of a vicar
of the parish.

[Note: The Evercreech estate
was also sold off at around this time, but the Thornbury estate passed to Anne
Newman's descendents, the Newman-Toll family, who retained it until the
1930s.

In the little church at Fifehead Magdalen is a small chapel on the north side
of the chancel that was built by Sir
Richard Newman in 1693 (see separate page describing Chantries). The chapel contains three wall-mounted memorial
stones, a small one on the west wall, a larger one on the east wall, and a very
large one on the north wall.

West wall memorial stone: The inscription on the black stone
mounted on the west wall is shown below.

"Richard Newman
of Evercreech Park, com. Somerset, aged 32 years,
lies in the vault underneath in the (second?) leaden coffin north,
and removed from the chancell in October M.D.CXCIII (1693);
leaveing one sonne Richard, and two daughters Anne and Barbara now living."

East wall memorial stone:

The marble memorial on the East Wall is dedicated to Thomas Newman
Newman of Fifehead and his son Richard Newman (see below)

Thomas Newman is at rest beneath this altar,
From the lineage of Newman of Newman Hall,
Essex
By time-honoured values, humble and down-to-earth
Piety in God, without regard to rank,
Rightly belonging to England,
Wise, not treacherous,
Principled and self accomplished,
In body, beyond eighty years of age,
In life, having more than eighty years,
Entombed and safe, the former illness is now ended,
October 21, 1649
Peacefully, soul deliver.

Note: the words "de Newman Hall, county
Essex, ortus" appear to have been inserted into the inscription at a
later date - see enlarged photo below:

It is not known when or why these words were added or by whom,
but perhaps someone believed that the Thomas Newman who built Newman
Hall in Essex in 1540 was the same Thomas Newman who is memorialized here.
Given that this Fifehead Thomas Newman died in 1649, he could not be the same
Thomas Newman who built Essex Hall, but that does not prove that no connection
existed between the two families.

The Latin inscription on the left are taken from the photograph below,
while the 'verbatim' translation was kindly given to me by Jerry
Gandolfo. See also John
Hutchin's History of Dorset for an alternative version of the
inscription.

Richard Newman;
Thomas's first-born is with the same, asleep in this tomb,
Son, Thomas, taken away in the prime of life by an attack of fever,
And Richard, this the builder founded,
This engraving composed,
Daughter, Anna, and surviving bring forth,
Watch from heaven with kindness below,
Into every justice diligently exercised,
True bereavement but with 40 years of life,
Father so virtuous known so long,
To exact service seen,
June 10, 1664
Gained in eighty years pains to breath the last.

Interior of Newman Chapel (2)

Memorial on the North Wall of Chapel
dedicated to Sir Richard Newman and family (described below)

On a mural monument on the north wall of the same chapel, on a pediment (see
photo below), are three well executed busts of Sir Richard, Sir Samwell and
Lady Newman, and beneath them, three female heads in high relief of white
statuary marble, which rises nearly to the roof of the chapel, and the arms
of Newman properly quartered and blazoned, and underneath this description:

In Memory ofSir Richard Newman, bart.,
who died Dec 30, 1721.
Also of Dame Frances his wife, who died Dec 4, 1730.
Also of Sir Samwell Newman, their
son,
who died June 4, 1747.
And of Frances and Barbara Newman, and
Elizabeth Kitchen, three of their daughters, who died,
viz Frances, on 27th day of August 1775;
Barbara on 6th day of January, 1763;
and Elizabeth on 26th day of May, 1774.
Sir Richard and his lady had three other children,
viz Richard, Grace and Edmonds,
all of whom died young.

"The ancient burying place of the Newmans appears to have been under
large yew-tree in the churchyard (see photo below), where there are some flat
stones and two tomb old stones. Upon one, which stands near the church tower
under the tree:

THE CORPS OF THOS.
NEWMAN GENT
IS HERE INTERRD APRIL V 1668(?)
WHILST TOWER REMAINE OR SPRING MY YEW
HERE I SHALL LIE AS GREEN YOUNG NEW
... RE NEWS TO US GOOD TIMES SHALL BRING
ONE SWALLOW DOTH NOW MAKE THE SPRING."

Note: When I saw the stone in 2003, I found the inscription damaged
and it has presumably suffered surface deterioration since John Hutchins wrote
his book. I was unable to detect the date 1668 on the stone (see photo above)
even though most of the rest of the text was clear enough and in agreement with
John Hutchin's text

"FIFEHEAD HOUSE (78362161), some 50yds. S.E. of (1), was demolished
in 1964 (see photos below); it was of three storeys,
with ashlar walls and slate-covered roofs. It was built in 1807 and had a
class-U plan. The E. front was symmetrical and of three bays, with large sashed
windows in each storey and with an elliptical- headed central doorway sheltered
by a portico with four unfluted Corinthian columns and an enriched entablature.
The ground-floor windows flanking the doorway were set in shallow segmental-headed
recesses. A slender plat-band marked the first floor; an entablature above
the second-floor windows had a triglyph frieze and a moulded cornice capped
by a low parapet wall; the corners of the facade had rusticated quoins. The
N. and S. elevations of the main building were each of three bays, with architectural
details as described; the W. elevation was masked by a two-storey service
range. Inside, the principal rooms had ceilings with enriched plaster cornices,
doorways with moulded and reeded surrounds, and carved marble chimneypieces.
The open-string stairs had balustrades with panels of foliate trellis-work
in cast lead, set between plain iron uprights; the handrails were of mahogany."

"The former MANOR HOUSE was built about 1510 as the residence of the
Newman family, who had rented the estate from its Lord, the Abbot of St. Augustine's
Abbey, Bristol, from 1408. The Lordship of the Manor was purchased from the
Bishop of Bristol by the then head of the family, Colonel
Richard Newman, after the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. Colonel
Newman died shortly afterwards and there were then, successively, three other
Richard Newmans who were Lords of the Manor. In 1699 the last of them was
raised to a baronetcy and it is his family memorial tablet and sculptures
which dominates the present vestry, originally the Newman mortuary chapel,
of the church. Sir Richard
died in 1721 and was succeeded by his son Sir
Samwell Newman who died unmarried in 1747, when the male line became extinct.
Two of Sir Samwell's three sisters continued to live at the Manor House and
to control the estate until the last one
died in 1775. In 1779 the estate was sold to a partnership of two men, the
Reverend William Whittaker of Motcombe, brother of a former vicar of Fifehead,
and Robert James, a Fifehead farmer. The Newman family had also acquired the
Manor of West Stour in 1656 and this, too, was purchased in 1779 by Messrs.
James and Whittaker. By 1805 Robert James's partner was the Reverend Walter
Whittaker, son of the former vicar, and it was they who sold the Manor to
George Cox.

So you have an estate which had been in the hands of the same family for
over 350 years, with the family farming half the lands and occupying the Manor
House for much of that period, thus giving a sense of stability to the village.
Then the estate was sold, and sold again, every twenty or thirty years or
so, until the 1920s when it was broken up as a unit. But by virtue of that
earlier stability, when the village of 1840 is examined in detail, it is possible
to suggest that as regards the houses and land holdings, there was not a great
deal of change from the village of the 1600s - the holdings were almost identical
and the houses were the same or replacements on roughly the same sites."

History of Dorset p58 notes that "The
Mansion, in part taken down about 1806 and the remainder converted into a farm
house, was perhaps situated in as pleasant a spot as any in the county of Dorset,
on a gentle eminence surrounded by avenues of lofty elms, commanding on the
east a picturesque view of Stour Provost ....".

The following photos of the 1807 house were kindly
given to me by Peter Mera who acts as secretary for the village hall in Fifehead.
Note: this is not the house that was occupied by the Newmans (which must
have been demolished sometime after the estate was sold in 1779.

I visited the spot with my father in the 1987, some twenty years after the
manor had been taken down, but an old villager guided us to its location - a
beautiful spot adjacent to the old church, facing a magnificent view over a
valley to the east.

Top Left: Church (left) and Manor Gate (right); Top Right: Manor Gate
Bottom: View from the Manor site looking East over Stour Provost (photos taken
Oct 2001)

Ha-ha wall in front of what used to be the lawn frontage to the manor house.

View looking back from ha-ha wall towards the location of the old house.
The brick wall used to contain the "walled garden" and is now a
goat enclosure.
The churchyard is behind the stone wall on the left of the picture, the church
being hidden behind the trees (see photo below).

Ha-ha wall with walled garden beyond.

Fifehead Church located in trees behind stone wall

The map below shows the location of Fifehead Magdalen south of Wincanton, on
the A30 between Shafsbury and Sherborne. Immediately to the east is Stour Provost,
mentioned in the description above.